The elephants were more of a scare tactic than anything else.
When you consider what it takes to feed an elephant daily, and the fact that they just aren’t mountain-climbers....this was mostly a stupid idea. If you notice....no one after this event....ever tries to use elephants as a military threat again. I think they kinda learned a lesson from the episode.
What did the Romans say when they saw Hannibal and his elephants?
Answer: ‘Here come Hannibal and his elephants!’
From: 101 Elephant Jokes
Elephants were used successfully in India and SE Asia up until the end of the 19th century. They even mounted cannon on them and used them as mobile artillery.
G. Julius Caesar fought war elephants at the Battle of Thapsus 6 April 46 BC.
Incorrect - Carthage continued their use through the end of the 3rd punic war, Armies of the the Indian subcontinent including the Burmese used through the 19th century (AD), last combat is typically attributed to the Vietnamese and siamese used them in the late 1880s/90s as cannons had increasingly made them less advantageous.
They were used for non-combat roles in WWII and were imperative in the retreat from Burma by the British.
From Wikipedia: “They are classed as a pack animal in a U.S. Special Forces field manual issued as recently as 2004, but their use by US personnel is discouraged because elephants are an endangered species.[56] The last recorded use of elephants in war occurred in 1987 when Iraq was alleged to have used them to transport heavy weaponry for use in Kirkuk.”
Elephants were used analogous to the way tanks are used today, or more like they were used in WWII. The practice of using African elephants for this *may* have arisen as a consequence of Greek experience of their use in India, where the elephant has been used for over 2000 years to do the jobs done nowadays by backhoes, forklifts, and the like. Alexander the Great won a battle in India, having innovated a method of coping with the battle elephants, after improvising a mass-crossing of a river.
Hannibal got his elephants up *to* the Alps after having to cross rivers with them; the method said to have been used was to build large (for stability) rafts, and covering the tops with cut sod, so the elephants would go out onto them. At one of these crossings, the Gauls were waiting on the opposite bank to have-at-you, but when they saw these rafts with elephants on them, they decided discretion was the better part of valor and vanished into the pucker-brush.
Elephants continued to be used in battles in n Africa for decades after this, but as usual, the Romans figured out how to cope with them. The last major Med-basin battle featuring elephants was Thapsus (as someone noted). The Romans imported elephants for their “games” and for what passed for zoos in imperial Rome, and AFAIK never much cared for their use in battle, correctly regarding them as at least as much of a threat to those using them as to those opposing them.
Not only African elephants, but also Indian elephants, were imported (by ship) for exhibition in Rome. :’)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HetYXwtCCho;t=1460